How great would life be if we lived a little, everyday?

Definitely the Night Owl

Today’s Daily Prompt asks, “Are you a night owl or are you the early bird? What’s your most productive time of day? When do you do your best work? ”

I’m definitely a night owl. I love working from about 9 pm until 2 am. The thing is, I’ve somehow convinced myself that I *should* go to bed by midnight. Because I need eight hours of sleep or I’m grumpy. And I like to work out for an hour in the morning. And I have a really hard time allowing myself to start work later than 9/9:30 am. Why? I’m not sure. I have more flexibility in my job now that I’ve ever had with regard to work hours. It’s important to have some overlap with co-workers, but that could happen if I was working in the afternoon, or late hours at night.

At some point I may give in to my natural inclination to work later hours, and see what happens. My guess is that no one would actually notice.

8 thoughts on “Definitely the Night Owl”

One… I’m a night person, and always have been. Apparently ‘hacker time’ was always from roughly midnight to 3am… or so I was told when I was a lot younger.

Two… I used to find it really tough to get to sleep before 2 or 3am in my old job, despite having to wake up at 7am the next day. Now that I can wake up whenever I want, I find myself a lot less stressed out about having to actually *get* to sleep in the first place, so have almost doubled the time I sleep per night. I think that even just the idea of having to get up at a specific time is often unproductive for a lot of people.

That said, the dynamic is also different now I’m with someone all the time, and so going to bed doesn’t need to be a battle. It can be a good thing, which it never was for a long time. Sleep is fascinating, especially when it relates to how we work, and what works best for people to work.

I think that even just the idea of having to get up at a specific time is often unproductive for a lot of people.

This is definitely true for me. Last night, I went to bed early, knowing that I had to get up even earlier than usual today to go to a conference. I tossed and turned all night, and felt like I only got a couple of hours of real sleep.